Last night, my husband and I were watching TV while we were eating dinner. We were watching Monster Quest, an new entry into the pseudo-science genre that has been invading the cable airwaves. This one is on the History Channel. Don’t ask me what Champ of Lake Champlain or Big Foot has to do with history, and it’s certainly not taken from a historical perspective. It’s closer to Ghost Hunters/Destination Truth that have shown on the Sci-Fi Channel. A sort of pseudo-reality show. Anyway, I don’t watch these because I believe any of it. I watch them for their Cheese factor. And the Cheese factor on this show is moderate. It’s got the prerequisite computer graphics for what the monster could look like, the true believer investigators/eye witnesses, and the token scientist to try and look fair and balanced.

Big Foot was the topic last night. A fishing cabin up in British Columbia was being “terrorized” by the Sasquatch. In 2003, in the Fall, it was ransacked; refrigerator pushed to the floor, dishes broken, a sink in the bathroom ripped off the wall. At first the owner thought kids had done it, but the closest town was 200 miles away, so it couldn’t be that. Next thought was a bear searching for food came it, but a bear expert said it didn’t look like a typical bear attack, and anyway it was too late in the season for bears to be out. Therefore, it had to be Big Foot. This cabin became the focus of the “investigation”. After each commercial break, when they came back to the show, it always started by talking about the cabin. On one, the narrator started by saying something to the effect of “This cabin has been violated…” He only had to get that far for the 10 year old in me to send my thoughts straight to the gutter. I turned to my husband, who apparently, has the same 10 year old mentality, but he made the mistake of having taken a bite first, and started choking. My laughter turned to worry as his face started to turn red. I don’t remember how to do the Heimlick, and would probably end up breaking his ribs or worse rather than helping. Luckily, he got his windpipe cleared, and my nervousness turned to laughter again, as he laughed between hacking. Having survived that, the rest of night became references to cabins being violated nearly killing you.

So, watching cheesy shows can be fun, but all safety precautions should be taken before sitting down to watch them.